Funny how my perception of people skill has shifted its focus from beating the crowd to feeling good about myself afterwards. Today I had to pull myself out of busy work and confront the guest to my apartment invited in by my roommate, which is currently on leave from Yale. I know I will screw up the introduction (which is the real one since yesterday I was forced to meet her in front of my parents), and sure enough, she was still lying on her bed when I made my timid attempt at a insouciant greeting, on my way to the fridge.

She was perhaps also struck by my untimely visit, and had to prop herself up for the event. In any case I ended up dumping a lot of my academia philosophic crap on her, which was naturally expected after so many years of schooling. We then had a new visitor, some undergraduate Taiwanese dude from near my apartment on campus. The atmosphere in the room suddenly switched from casual conversation between two people to a more public performance type of deal. I was a bit at loss about when to stop myself from rambling inaccurate expressions of my gut feelings about certain subjects, which tends to be accentuated after an intensive brain drill in front of the desk. But I wasn’t try very hard this time either, merely keeping it at a low key, since I know I have immunity against social imperfection, as long as I am positively engaged in other form of intellectual pursuit. I always had some respect for environmentalists, and this school seems to harbor a lot of such talents. Still it was awkward for me to strike an interesting topic for both them and me. But then I just played the weak side, which is my usual attitude during first appearance, which something I need to work against in the future, especially during job interviews. But oh well, my current state of affair isn’t so amenable to good workmanship, healthy living style or even self-induced pain-gain structure. What I desparately need is perhaps some form of brain tea I heard of in Europe that condenses my productive hours while leaving me the freedom of enjoying social interactions and gaining a better sense of belonging. So far I am working towards such positive sentiment within the math department, but for my career benefit, it might behoove me to enlarge the circle and get regularly involved with other areas as well, but as I complained before, my job renders regularity inefficient.